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Friday, July 3, 2009

Our last Gathering Together Farms dinner was over a month ago, but we still have one last food pairing to write about. Before I write about our dessert experience, let me preface something. I do not like dessert wine. I'm putting this out there to be completely honest. I typically don't enjoy wines with high residual sugar and will almost always pass up dessert wines at tasting events. Now that that's out of the way, let's get started.

Our dessert of the evening was a Strawberry & Rhubarb Japonaise. This was the absolute perfect way to top off our phenomenal meal. While sweet, it was also light enough to be somewhat refreshing. This lead me to believe our wine pairing was most likely going to dominate in the sweet department.

Paired with our dessert was a pouring of 2005 Harris Bridge Vineyard Sedouce; a pinot noir dessert wine out of Philomath. From the winery: Luscious, sweet and intense. Dark cherry, hints rose petal in the aroma. Raspberry coulis on the palate and a heady warmth carries the finish. As somewhat of a wine novice, I'll admit I was intrigued by a pinot noir dessert wine. I had never had one before, but I was scared at the fact this wine sits around 10% residual sugar.

I'm glad I kept an open mind because this wine was incredible. I didn't take tasting notes at the time and would otherwise apologize for not being able to be specific, but lucky for you we just so happened to buy a bottle at the end of the night! As a side note, what's somewhat unique about wines from Harris Bridge is that they wrap each bottle with short stories written by its owners.

This wine pours a translucent, dark rose color and gives off very strong hues of dark cherries, raspberries, and lots of sugar. Interestingly enough, it also gives off the impression that it has a higher alcohol content than it really does. Harris Bridge's description of Sedouce is dead on and I really don't have much to add other than I am incredibly impressed. This is the first dessert wine I've had that's not just delicious, but very memorable as well. Sedouce is available for $29.

As final pleasant surprise, we were offered a super secret pour of Chateau Bozo's pinot noir.